Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/105

Rh "Try it" The fellow stood upright, his arms to his sides. There was no appearance of bravado in his tone. He seemed completely at his ease. "Touch me! Grasp me, if you can!"

I took up his challenge on the instant But scarcely had I advanced a step than I was seized with a sickening faintness, so that I was compelled to take refuge on the seat. He stood and watched me for a moment. Then he came and touched me. His touch was real enough, but I shrank from it with a sense of loathing which I am powerless to put into words.

"See, I am quite real." Strangely enough it was then that, for the first time, I doubted it "It is only when I wish it that I am a thing of air." Bending over, he fixed his bright eyes upon my face. His glance had on me that paralysing effect which is popularly supposed to be an attitude of certain members of the serpent tribe. "Let me teach you the secret of my cards."

He held the pack in front of me—I knew he held it, although for the life of me I could not have removed my eyes from off his face. So we remained in silence for some moments. Then he went on, his tone seeming to steal like some stupefying poison into my veins.

"This is a great day for me. It is a day I have looked forward to ever since I—died. It was not an heroic death—to stab oneself with a common warder's common knife, to hang oneself with a prison sheet from the bar of a broken window. One would not choose a death like that And yet, if die one must, what matters it how one dies? And time has